


the serum

by badgerfic (badgerxu)



Series: the serum [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Mentions of Blood, Poisoning, comatose reader, gender neutral reader, hopefully good team dynamics, long intro, worried gf wanda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:48:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24053131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badgerxu/pseuds/badgerfic
Summary: “You and I are going to take a little trip,” the man stated, reaching his free hand to take out the earpiece hidden in your ear. It wasn’t working anyway, but you guessed he had just wanted to be sure.“See, soon enough you’re going to go unconscious,” he explained, his lips forming a sickening smile that would have sent shivers down your spine if you weren’t paralyzed.“And when you do, the serum’s going to work it’s magic. Right now, you’re just paralyzed. But when you go under, it’ll start eating your little brain up until all you have left to remember is your name.”alternatively; Reader goes missing during a mission, and Wanda freaks out trying to find them.
Relationships: Wanda Maximoff/Original Character(s), Wanda Maximoff/Reader
Series: the serum [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1735252
Comments: 4
Kudos: 64





	the serum

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is as much a team dynamic fic as it is a wanda x reader fic.. also it’s kinda slow paced. and i have no idea if any of the stuff i’ve written is even remotely scientifically or medically accurate but lets just say its all possible in this realm of reality, okay? okay. hope you like it!!
> 
> cross-posted on tumblr @badgerfic (go follow me!)

“Tony, report. How’s disabling the power source going?” Steve asked from his vantage point.

“Oh, it’s going great, Cap,” Tony replied. Steve didn’t miss the sarcasm in his voice. “Though, I could work a little faster if I wasn’t fighting off shithead HYDRA guards at the same time.”

“Hang on, I’m on my way,” Steve reassured him, but not climbing down just yet. “Y/N, what’s your status?”

No answer.

“Y/N, status.”

Steve fixed his earpiece, wondering if it was malfunctioning. He could hear the noises of battle in the background, but not your voice.

“Y/N, I said give me your status. Where are you?” 

Steve said into his earpiece for the third time, still no reply.

Wanda, trying to fight off a group of stubborn guards with Nat, heard Cap’s queries, and the silence from you made her heart drop to her stomach.

You never did this on missions, always responding to your team within seconds of hearing them speak in your ear. Never had you failed to give Cap a status report, even if you were preoccupied.

Something happened to you, and everyone on the team had a feeling it wasn’t good.

“Does anyone know where Y/N is?” Steve asked, leaping down from his high position in a tree. He cursed under his breath when he received a chorus of No’s.

At this point, Wanda was shaking with worry. You weren’t okay.

The HYDRA soldiers kept coming. Nat and Wanda did their best to bring down the foot soldiers, with Tony flying above trying to do damage to the control towers. 

This was supposed to be a simple in-and-out intelligence mission, with you being the key infiltrator while the others hit the camp as a means of distraction. It was supposed to be such an easy mission that half of the team didn’t even come along, opting to stay back at headquarters.

But now, as Wanda looked around her and saw the absolute chaos occurring, she realized that this was no in-and-out mission. 

“No visual of Y/N from up here Cap,” Tony said, blasting a group of enemies that were about to load into a tank. “FRIDAY, try to track Agent Y/N’s comms device. Maybe they’re just busy.”

“Or maybe Y/N’s in trouble, Tony!” Wanda yelled, red pulses coming from her hands to fling an incoming vehicle into a tree. 

Tony winced, not liking being yelled at. “Okay, Wanda, no need to shout,” 

“We need to regroup. Wanda, Nat, stay where you are. Tony and I’ll head down there,” Steve shouted, his shield returning to his hand.

Tony flew down to where Wanda and Nat stood fighting. He shot a missile near the enemies’ feet, sending a group of the soldiers flying into a clearing, knocked out. That gave the team enough time to hear FRIDAY’s voice echo through their comms devices, and enough time for a feeling of dread to settle in their guts.

“Boss, Agent Y/N’s comms device is turned off. I can’t find a signal. I can’t track them.”

Shouts started coming from the distance, a new wave of foot soldiers and a few tanks heading for the team’s location. Tony flew upwards again, readying himself to take on the tanks. 

“Jesus Christ, Tony, I thought your sources said this was a small intelligence base,” Natasha stated, getting her knives ready. “Why the hell are there so many soldiers?”

“Well, then, I guess my sources were wrong,” Tony sniped back.

Wanda began to overthink. You were missing. This wasn’t good. This was supposed to be an easy mission for the team. Nothing made sense. Where were you? Were you hurt? Were you dead?

That last thought was what set Wanda off. Just as the tanks started shooting at Tony and Steve’s shield was met with bullets, Wanda thought that enough was enough. She had to find you, and she couldn’t do it if all of this was in her way.

“Steve, when I say go, take Nat and head for cover. Tony, fly higher.” She didn’t wait for a response.

And so, with red energy eminating from her entire being, she lifted herself up into the air. 

She had to find you.

Wanda braced herself for the surge of energy she was about to release. It would stop the fight, even kill a few dozen people. But all she could think to care about right now was the fact that you were inside the base, alone and possibly hurt.

She had to find you.

“NOW!” 

With a bellowing yell escaping her throat, Wanda expelled a burst of red energy upon the entire base. Waves of red engulfed the enemies, throwing them into each other and yards away from the team. The tanks crumpled into heaps of metal. The noise of chaos was replaced by a buzzing sound from the energy surge.

Steve and Nat crawled out from the hiding space from behind a damaged vehicle, mouths agape. Tony flew down to Wanda, still floating in the air. Her eyes were slowly fading from red to brown.

“Damn,” Tony said, examining the wreckage. “Remind me never to piss you off again.”

Wanda landed on the ground next to Steve. Tony hovered above them, keeping an eye out.

Steve addressed FRIDAY. “FRIDAY, can you track where Y/N’s comms device last pinged?” 

“Somewhere in the west wing of the base, Captain. The structures are lined with lead, so it’s hard to pinpoint the exact location.”

Natasha’s eyebrows furrowed, “West wing? That building looks like it can barely hold a hundred people. How can it be big enough to have sections?”

“Because,” Wanda started, crouching down and touching the ground with a glowing red hand, as if feeling the earth. “That building is the entrance.”

She pointed to the building, and lowered her finger to point downwards. “That’s the base. Y/N’s in there, and I think they’re underground.”

\--

Your head lulled to the side, a rash on the side of your neck growing more painful by the minute. You could only open your swollen eyes for a few seconds at a time. Your ears barely registering the sound of sirens going off in the far corridors of the facility.

You could hear someone muttering near you, though, their tone of voice suggesting hopelessness. The man — you had concluded it was a man by the deep boom of his voice — barked orders into the receiver. You could only grasp a few words from him: “kill” “avengers” and “agent”.

You tried to stand up for the third time, but failed to do so as your legs buckled from under you. Whatever this man had injected into you had you immobile for the better part of an hour now. 

The man noticed you attempting to stand and scoffed. 

“Don’t bother, agent,” the man turned away from you. “The serum’s been in your bloodstream long enough that it’s started attacking your central nervous system,” he loudly explained, not even bothering to face you as he watched the events unfold through the multiple monitors on the wall.

This must be the security control room, you assumed hazily. You tried opening your eyes once more, scanning the dark room for any other details that would help you figure out where the hell you were in this god-forsaken facility.

Your comms device wasn’t working anymore, either, as normally you would hear continuous mid-fight banter from the team stream into your ear. Trying once again to stand, you desperately dug your nails into the wall behind you as leverage, but to no avail. You couldn’t feel your legs.

The man, who was an old bald dude with an accent you could only describe in your haze as Europian, was clearly in a fit of rage as he watched the facility get wrecked by your team. With your declining sense of hearing, you could vaguely make out his frantic orders for his men to ready a plane. He turned to you after, catching you squirming in your restraints. His eyes held just as much rage as his voice did, if not more.

In a flash he rushed to where you sat on the floor and gripped your face roughly in his hand, pulling your jaw so that your face was mere inches from his. Your eyes were still swollen shut from your state.

“Open your eyes!” he yelled, spit landing on your face. You didn’t listen to him, partly because you couldn’t physically open your eyes without it being painful.

“I said-,” a cold blade pressed into your cheek, “-open your eyes…. or I’ll open them for you,” he whispered, pushing the blade into your skin just enough to draw blood.

Slowly opening your eyes to a small sliver, you felt the blade retract from your skin. A drop of blood made its way down your cheek, dripping past your neck and onto the floor. 

“There you go,” the man said, his face so close to yours that you could smell his putrid breath. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” he whispered, dragging the blade further up your face, using it to brush a strand of your away from your eyes.

“Now, here’s what we’re going to do,” he started, knife drifting down and abruptly stopping just below your chin, inching dangerously close to your neck. Letting go of your face, the man used to blade to slowly tilt your head up, giving him a better look of your beaten and swollen face.

At this point, you could no longer feel your legs. Your hands were going numb, and in a few minutes they too would lose all feeling. The sheer fear of what this man was going to do to you had stopped you from going fully unconscious, but you could feel your mind struggling to keep itself awake. 

“You and I are going to take a little trip,” the man stated, reaching his free hand to take out the earpiece hidden in your ear. It wasn’t working anyway, but you guessed he had just wanted to be sure. 

“See, soon enough you’re going to go unconscious,” he explained, his lips forming a sickening smile that would have sent shivers down your spine if you weren’t paralyzed. 

“And when you do, the serum’s going to work it’s magic. Right now, you’re just paralyzed. But when you go under, it’ll start eating your little brain up until all you have left to remember is your name.” 

His words took a minute to register in your foggy mind, a frantic feeling of terror seeping into your chest. Your hands were now fully numb, and your neck and head were the only parts left that you could move. But seeing as there was a knife intimately bearing down on your throat, you were essentially fucked. You tried mouthing words to the sick bastard infront of you, yet your thoughts were so out of it that you could barely open your mouth. 

The man was going to say something else, but was cut off by the sound of his radio going off near the monitors. His face clearly twisted once again into an expression of rage, and he stood up to grab the device and scream into it. Slamming the radio onto the table, he moved toward you, forcefully grabbing your hair to drag you to the exit. 

Your scalp flared in agony, and you desperately wanted to claw your fingernails into this asshole’s hands if it weren’t for the fact that your hands and arms had gone completely stiff. Your eyes could no longer fight the battle against unconsciousness, and you were slowly giving in to the darkness. 

But as your heavy eyelids cut off the small sliver of light you could see, a flash of red burst the metal door of the security room open. The death grip on your hair loosened, and your paralyzed body dropped to the ground. Shouts and sounds of fighting engulfed the room, the noise of metal bouncing against the wall and hitting the control panels ringed in your ear. 

You tried to lift your head up from the ground to try and signal your team mates that you were alive, but to no avail. 

The last thing you would hear as your mind succumbed to the darkness was the sound of bone shattering, and the voice of a woman shouting your name in desperation.

\--

Chaos ensued amongst the Avengers in the next hours after you’d been found beaten and unconscious by the team. Wanda, devastated to see your limp form on the ground, didn’t think twice to lift your body up. With a flick of her hands, red waves carried you off the ground, out of the facility and into the Quinjet. She didn’t care about the bastard who did this to you, Steve took care of him when he broke his arm with his shield.

All she cared about was you surviving whatever torture they put you through.

“Scan vitals,” Tony said once Wanda had laid you on a stretcher in the jet. Blue rays of light sweeped your body. Wanda kneeled on the floor near your head, hands brushing away your hair. You were sweating way too much, your face was colored black and blue, and your neck was a vibrant shade of scarlet.

“How are they?” Steve approached Tony. Nat sat at the front, piloting the team back to the tower.

“Not good,” Tony mumbled, reading off of a screen on the wall. 

Wanda looked up at Tony. “What do you mean?” 

Tony’s brows furrowed and his head tilted in confusion as he swiped at the screen. He visibly paled at what he read. “Says here they’re internally bleeding. And they’ve been injected with a serum, which I don’t exactly know what it’s doing to them, and I can’t take samples until we’re back at the tower,” he stated.

Crouching down next to you and tilting your head to the side, he examined the rash covering the side of your neck. 

“Tony, they’re dying. You have to do something,” Wanda demanded. 

“Look, Wanda, I’m not exactly medically-certified, okay? If we want to help Y/N, we have no choice but to wait until we get them to Banner back at base,” Tony stated. 

Wanda wanted to argue, but she knew there was no point. If Tony said there was nothing he could do, then there was nothing he could do.

“I’ve already alerted Bruce and Clint. The med staff are preparing the medical unit too.” Natasha shouted from her place at the controls. 

Wanda nodded, Nat’s words not exactly soothing the panic she felt, but reassuring her nonetheless. Tony patted Wanda on the back before standing up to talk with Steve. 

Looking back down at you, Wanda couldn’t help the tears that swelled in her eyes. If only she had gotten to you faster, you wouldn’t be like this. 

“We’re going to have to talk to Doc Crazy if we want to figure out what he administered to Y/N’s bloodstream,” Tony said to Steve. The other man nodded in response.

“I’ll have Hill place him in one of the cells back at the tower before they ship him off to SHIELD,” Steve said before moving to join Nat at the co-pilot’s seat. Tony sat at the other side of the jet, presumably to call Fury and inform him that their sources had been gravely mistaken about the mission details.

Wanda could do nothing but cradle your head in her hands, whispering sweet nothings to you throughout the entire trip back.

“You’re going to be okay. You have to be. I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t.”

Bruce and Clint were waiting near the landing pad when the jet landed, ready to wheel you off and hand you over to the doctors in the medical wing. 

As soon as Bruce got a sample of your blood, you were wheeled off to be operated on. Wanda stepped forward to follow you, but was stopped in her tracks.

“Let them do what they can,” Steve said, gently gripping her shoulder to pull her back.

Wanda shook her head, looking back at Steve with tears in her eyes. “What if they can’t do anything?” She hated to ask it, but it seemed like whatever contaminated your body had been doing a pretty good job at killing you. 

“Hey,” Steve turned Wanda’s body towards him. “They’re going to do their best, okay? Bruce and Tony are already up at the lab getting started on the antidote,” he assured her. Wanda could sense an underlying panic in Steve’s aura, but he was trying to mask it with hopefulness.

Wanda gave a slight nod of understanding at his words. She appreciated how calm he was at a time like this. You being injured to the point of near death not only had her shaking with fear, but the entire team was on edge as well. 

“Captain, Dr. Strobl is in cell 1-7b.” Steve and Wanda heard Agent Hill speak through their earpieces. Steve gave a quick response back, before turning to Wanda again. Before he could open his mouth, Wanda spoke up.

“I want to be here when they finish operating.”

Steve shot her a smile, “I was going to ask if you wanted to stay, you beat me to it.” With a final pat to her shoulder, the older man headed to interrogate Dr. Strobl.

Wanda sat down on one of the lounge chairs, closing her eyes to calm herself down. She knew it was no use crying over Y/N right now, but her emotions betrayed her as tears flooded her eyes and streamed down her face. 

It was no question that you were incredibly valuable to the team, not just as an agent but also as a friend. You joined SHIELD at an incredibly young age, and were the youngest person to become a member of the team. Yes, you were trained to be a deadly assassin and spy, but you were also a good-natured person. At some point, you’ve been there for everyone, especially Wanda.

...  
_  
“Wanda?” You called for her through the door, knocking twice and waiting for a response. You heard a quiet “come in”, so you slowly opened the door to her bedroom._

_Wanda sat up on her bed, smiling at you as you entered her room and closed the door behind you._

_You stood rooted to your spot for a moment, just staring at her as she stared back. You could see the defeat in her tired eyes, shame evident in her body language as she was holding herself in her arms._

_“It’s not your fault, you know,” you finally spoke. The words caught her off-guard, but she quickly regained her composure. She sighed, clearly disagreeing with you._

_“I doubt Sam thinks that,” she whispered._

_You grabbed a desk chair and dragged it so that it was infront of her. Sitting on it, you took her hands from their crossed position against her chest. Moving your thumbs in soothing circles against her knuckles, her closed fists slowly relaxed under your touch._

_“He knows you can’t fully control your powers yet,” you tried to dispel her worries. “And you only bruised him, he’ll recover.”_

_She pinched your hand, earning a little shout from you. “Not funny,” she said, a small smile gracing her features. Wanda stared down at your intertwined hands, not fully forgetting about the incident that occurred in the training room an hour ago._

_“Hey,” you whispered gently, causing her to tilt her head up to look at you. “It’ll get easier, I promise.”_

_“I hope it does,” she sighed again. “I don’t know what I’ll do if it doesn’t.”_

_“It will,” you repeated, leaning forward to press your lips against her forehead. Her eyes fluttered shut at the gesture._

_“And I’ll help you through it, Wanda.”_  
...

Wanda smiled fondly at the memory, the events of that day still very vivid in her mind. She had accidentally used too much force trying to deliver a blast of energy towards Sam’s direction. It caused her friend to fly back and slam into the wall, giving him a concussion and a few bruises. It was a bad day for her (and Sam), and yet you somehow made it a little bit better. 

She was shaken out of her trip down memory lane when she saw Bruce walking frantically towards her.

“Bruce wha-”

“Come with me, you need to do something.” Bruce cut her off, dragging her to a room where you were being moved to a bed. Why didn’t they tell her you were out of the operating room?

“Is Y/N okay?” She asked, watching as nurses hooked you up to a heart monitor. Wanda so badly wanted to move forward and just lay next to you and hold you close, but thought the better of it when she saw the bruises that lined your limbs and the rash that spread even further down your neck.

“Not yet,” Bruce answered, thanking the nurses as they finished their tasks and moved out of the room. He grabbed Wanda’s arm, pulling her forward and placing her hand above your forehead. 

“You need to peek inside Y/N’s mind and see if they’re thinking about anything. Literally anything,” Bruce quickly said, one arm crossed against his chest and the other placed on top as he bit the nail of his thumb. 

“Why, what is this about?” Wanda asked, a demanding tone in her voice. She kept her hand hovering over your forehead, but did nothing as she waited for Bruce to respond. 

Bruce shook his head. “I can’t say for sure right now, but I just need you to check, okay? Please?” He said.

Wanda couldn’t decipher the emotion that Bruce’s voice held, whether it was alarm, frustration, or both. She didn’t like any of them. 

Inhaling a deep breath, she turned to you. Closing her eyes, she summoned red energy to the center of her palm. 

It’s said that people in comas often dream during the entirety of them being unconscious. Sometimes people have good dreams, most times they’d experience never-ending looping nightmares. It really depends on what caused the coma in the first place. Some dream with no sound, others dream with no images. Wanda had done this before, as part of her experimentation trials under HYDRA. She’d invade the minds of the unconscious, replacing whatever they were dreaming of with something they fear. Of all the minds she’s seized and controlled, all of them had some form of hallucination they were seeing.

But right now, as red energy pulsed from her palm to wade through your thoughts, a wave of shock rippled through her. Wanda’s eyes flew open, a gasp leaving her lips as she stumbled back. Bruce caught her before she could knock into an IV drip, asking her what she had seen in there.

“Wanda? Wanda! What did you see?” Bruce shook her, trying to get a response.

After a few seconds, Wanda whispered back. “Nothing,” she mumbled, staring at your peaceful face before turning to Bruce.

“I didn’t see anything, Bruce.”

\--

**Author's Note:**

> feedback helps writers so please tell me your thoughts!!


End file.
